Sunday, June 19, 2005

Two Tempe Town Lake penthouse condos recently sold – for more than $2.1
mil apiece. I guess some people just can’t pay enough for the smell of
stagnant, rotten dam runoff.

And just down the street, something far smellier is wafting in: the
Centerpoint Condominiums are slated to begin construction soon, an event
which will begin the final, brutal assault on whatever shadow of life
still lingers in the woebegone, robocorporate fluff-hole of downtown
Tempe.

Once built, these luxury “mixed-use” condos will be weighing in at four
towers and twenty-two stories, making them by far the largest
structures in the Tempe landscape. And this won’t be your everyday
block-long cluster of skyscrapers: with units starting at around
$250,000, this is the kind of place even the Jeffersons aren’t likely to
be moving on up to.

But hey, look at all the crazy, decadent
rich-person shit you get: in addition to a 1,300-space parking garage
(secured, natch!), residents get access to a wine lounge, a fitness
center, at least two spas, yoga and pilates studios, an “electronic
lounge,” two in-house movie theaters, “deluxe meal[s] cooked by
full-time resident chef Troy Thivierge,” concierge service, and an
“urban beach with sand and shaded patio.” Wow – it’s Beverly Hills in a
box!

To get a better idea of just how bad Tempe will soon suck for normal
people, here’s Ken Losch, principal of Avenue Communities and one of the
project’s high priests:

We spent over a year researching and touring more than 200 properties
across North America and there is no other project of this magnitude in
the United States or Canada.... Centerpoint will have a spectacular
international and cosmopolitan appearance, but it will also have a
strong sense of community that is lacking in so many other developments.

Oh sure, it’ll have a “strong sense of community.” Just don’t ever dream
of being a part of this community – that is, unless your idea of home
is hanging out with pedicured, ruling-class caucasian golf enthusiasts
in a fucking country club biodome.

And hey, maybe if the rest of us are lucky we can get hired at one of
the dozens of Starbucks they’re sure to plant in every corner of the
“exclusive amenity level,” so the yuppie fucks won’t even have to
descend to street level to get their half-decaf skim McLattes.

All of this is already pretty nauseating; but, if you can stomach it,
try sampling this last little nugget of corporate corpulence:

In addition, the Valley’s first true urban grocery will encompass the
majority of the first floor of phase one. The 16,000 square-foot
gourmet grocery, deli and café will further connect the residents to
downtown Tempe by offering a service that currently does not exist.

If tears of incomprehension and rage are not yet streaming down your
crumpled face, it is because you haven’t heard that, just down the
street, another condo project (this one a mere 16 stories) has bought
out the Gentle Strength Co-op’s parcel of land. Gentle Strength, of
course, is Tempe’s current “gourmet grocery, deli and café”! But I guess
there’s not much we can say about that now – the co-op’s own management
negotiated the sale of their property to the developers. Thanks, y’all!
Nothing says “community empowerment” like selling out an entire
neighborhood to corporate greed.

For a better idea of the delusions and hypocrisy this town employs to
justify such a stratospheric level of development, check out what Jan
Schaefer, Tempe’s economic development administrator, had to say about
the oh-so modest and historically sensitive architecture of University
Ave’s Chase Manhattan building (just across the street from the future
Cosmo Building and the Centerpoint Condos):

We knew that they wanted to build a very nice building... The intention
was to look at historic buildings and build something that would mesh.

“Mesh” you say, Jan? Mesh, you flippant, facetious profit-face? Anyone
who has seen the Chase building knows that the only way that
soul-crippling monstrosity could ever “mesh” is if it was stuffed into
the world’s most giant blender with one hundred million Lexus SUVs and
the exhumed corpse of JP Morgan. This is what happens when you live in a
city so eager and willing to sell itself out that it takes real-estate
developers and multinational banking institutions at their word.

Of course, the sick irony of this is that soon, the entire landscape
surrounding the Chase Manhattan building will be mutated and debased
enough to “mesh” around this one awful building – as soon as these
gentrifying land-pimps and spineless bureaucrats finally get around to
burying the entire rest of our town under identically awful
blue-mirrored peach & teal monoliths.

This is the future, my friends – and you weren’t invited!

If you have computer access, this publication strongly recommends that
you educate and enrage yourself about Tempe projects such as the
Centerpoint Condos, the Cosmo Building, and the Chase building. For a
start, check out and
index.shtml#1> to get a firsthand look of what our town is going to look like, post-Centerpoint.

If you’re without access to the web, there’s another easy way to get
information about the Centerpoint Condos: walk down to the parking lot
on 5th & Farmer. On the east side of the lot – right in front of the
patio seating at Z’Tejas – there’s a trailer-sized billboard covered
with advertising for the condos, complete with a giant television screen
playing a continuous loop of a commercial for the project. It’s the
same ad that they show on their website, and it’s playing to passersby
at most times of the day and night.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

A couple weeks ago – in the middle of a generally low-income
neighborhood and just two blocks from my house – they laid the
foundation for yet another luxury “mixed-use” condo.

The website for the Merrion Square Lofts
() claims that the area in
which these “luxury two-story lofts” are located – the northwest corner
of Beck & University – is a

dynamic urban setting that has produce [sic] some of the most
sought-after real estate in the city. A magnet for new restaurants, art
galleries, retailers and progressive business [sic].

This description seems a bit flattering if you consider that right now,
Beck Avenue north of University is mostly just a “magnet” for cops...
Oh, wait, you must be talking about Mill Avenue – that place where the
pod people go to consume when they’re homesick for Burbank!

The literature sniffs on:

Refined amenities blend with your own panache for interior design to
create a unique environment that lets you fully express yourself and
your love of the arts.

Are you starting to get a hint of the kind of vermin this trap is trying
to lure? Our neighbors will soon be the type of people who use words
like amenities and panache with a straight face.

The Merrion Square condos also promise, in accordance with your
generously well-endowed pocketbook and bourgeois affectations, a

place to dine, dream, entertain, and renew yourself in the company of
like souls. Surrounded by deco-styled accents and comfortable lofts,
provide [sic] all of the elements necessary for the perfect urban home.

Translation: “Don’t worry, folks – we’ve got a strict anti-beaner policy
in this joint!” All this “refined” homeopathic psychofluff just reeks
of LA-variety status obsession – the kind that's both New Age and old as
the crusades. It’s Klan for the kappuccino set. “Renew yourself”? Shit.

The aristocratic smarm reaches its climax with this passage:

What attracts people and businesses here is an uncommon desire for a
more active, urban way of living and doing business away from suburban
sprawl, commuter traffic and the responsibilities of conventional home
ownership. Tempe’s lifestyle is about freedom and creative living –
following a path of your choosing.

“Tempe’s lifestyle”? “Freedom and creative living”? Now we’re
definitely not talking about the same neighborhood. The last time I
checked, people on my block hardly had the “freedom” to walk outside at
night without getting interrogated by the pigs. Most people here are
still hardly even “free” enough to pay their rent on time. They must be
talking about that other Tempe “lifestyle” – the one over by that
artificial new “lake,” in those half-million-dollar “mega-offices”
nobody over here in the real world will ever see the inside of, unless
we’re cleaning out their mega-toilets.

Please, let’s stop talking about this yuppie rampart like it’s some
kind of summer camp, and see it for what it is: the latest chapter in
Tempe’s ongoing war on the poor. Plain and simple, it’s gentrification.

The hidden code
Some people would make you think that real-estate development is a
complicated economic process – but really, gentrification is easy to
understand if you just learn how to translate the code.

For instance, the words “redevelop and revitalize” are used frequently
by developers and city councils when they want to whitewash a new
gentrification project. The city government of Tempe even has its own
“Redevelopment & Revitalization Task Force.” Sure, peppy feel-good
verbs like “revitalization” don’t sound like anything worth opposing.
Who could possibly be against vitality?

But then, don’t they have to tear down existing stores and homes to
“redevelop”? And why do these new, more-vital developments they build
always seem to be priced so that only wealthy people can afford to live
and shop in them? And don’t a lot of these new properties become
secondary homes and “investments” that are likely to sit empty for at
least part of the year?

Knocking down affordable housing; tearing down trees; paving green
lots; and replacing it all with a bunch of locked, empty, overpriced
rooms – how exactly does this bring vitality to a neighborhood? Does
kicking poor people out of a neighborhood develop it into a better place
to live? Or are redevelopment and revitalization just code words for
plain old destruction, theft, and greed? Who and what is getting
“revitalized” by this process? Who is going to benefit from the
development? Will it be you?

I guess the answer to all these questions will depend on who you’re
asking – the rich people making money off the new condos, or the poor
people forced from their homes and businesses because of them.

Now, think about Merrion Square’s “dynamic urban setting.” No one can
really imagine what these words actually mean – but whatever it is, it
sure sounds like fun, doesn’t it? The words are just vague enough to
promise everything and define nothing.

But notice the word dynamic – what exactly is in motion here? The
answer is, as usual, just money. Poor people are moving out; the rich
are moving in. Take off the PR spin, and in “dynamic urban setting”
you’ll find a more honest, hidden message to the upwardly mobile: It’s
time to invest. It’s a subtle guarantee that property values will
continue to rise – good news for people playing the real-estate market.
Maybe a better way of expressing it might be: “We haven’t yet completely
finished hosing the mud-people out of sight. We’ve kept just enough of
them around to leave a little ‘ethnic flavor’ and a couple of decent
Mexican restaurants. Don’t worry though, you won’t have to actually talk
to any of them – unless you’re telling them how to park your car.”

As for a Merrion Square’s “lifestyle” of “freedom and creative living” –
well, some people have a “lifestyle” and a “creative living”; the rest
of us can only afford “rent” and a “job.” Do you really think the future
inhabitants of Merrion Square are actually going to hang out with the
people who live in this neighborhood now? Do you think they’re going to
stroll over to the Rollins Food Mart or the River of Life food ministry
to get their groceries with the rest of us? Do you think they’re going
to be buying their socks and wrenches from the 99-cent store? Will they
hit up the Multigenerational Center to check their email, or barbecue
with the ballers at Jaycee Park? Of course not. Cheap food, laundromats
and check-cashing booths – i.e., the plain facts of actual urban life –
just aren’t a part of their “active, urban way of living.” They’ll walk
from their apartment doors down to their secured indoor parking garage,
get in their Escalades (lock your doors kids, it’s a bad neighborhood),
and whisk themselves away to Whole Foods, or the Pottery Barn, or LA
Fitness, or Fashion Square, or wherever other fucking place up in
Scottsdale they go to find “the company of like souls.”

Of course, the real plan is to bring Scottsdale down to us. And believe
me, they’re closer to doing this than you might think. Look around the
block – have younoticed all the rich-people crap being built lately?
Merrion Square is just one of a whole infestation of gentrification
projects in this town. There’s another on 1st & Beck. There’s that
“Abbey Lane” cluster just above the future Merrion Square, and those
awful new dayglo office buildings on University between Beck &
Hardy. They’re going to build luxury condos on the empty lot at 5th
& Roosevelt. They have big plans for that whole plot of land between
Roosevelt and Wilson below 5th. That “Regatta Pointe” bullshit around
1st & Farmer has almost swallowed up the Sail Inn. And there’s all
those new weird condos just above the “lake.” We’re surrounded, and the
seige has only begun.

Tempe’s class war
Not too many people realize that the word gentrification is just a
synomym for displacement of the poor. The dictionary calls
gentrification “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the
influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that
often displaces earlier usually poorer residents.” There’s another term
to describe that – class war – and certain people profiting from
gentrification would prefer that you didn’t ever make this connection,
because the building of “luxury” condos is directly related to the
raising of your rent. There is a very real effort, through carefully
chosen words like redevelopment, revitalization, and creative living to
ignore or distort simple facts about the war the rich wage on the poor.
Gentrification is just a continuation of the same old bullshit the rich
have been dealing to the poor since the day they invented the game.

A couple years ago on KAET, Phoenix city council member Tom Simplot
spelled out the essential requirement for a “revitalized” neighborhood
in unusually plain language: “You gotta have some folk.... Not just
folk. Folk with money.” It’s important to understand this simple point.
For all the rhetoric and cheerleading the profit-heads are throwing at
us, gentrification remains a very simple, cruel economic equation: poor
people out, rich people in. The people that profit from this math
already understand all this very well. They know which side of the class
war they’re standing on. Do you?

The good news
The good news is, the only way these people can keep making money off of
our poverty is to keep us complacent, ignorant, and divided enough to
control. That’s why everyone who lives in Tempe today should take the
time to learn how local real-estate developers work. Learn how to read
the hidden code in their lingo. It might even help to learn something
about the business of real estate itself – property laws, tax
exemptions, market indicators and all that. Sure it’s dull as hell – but
have you ever wondered if there’s a reason why it’s so boring and
opaque? Maybe if the jargon was easier to understand, people other than
developers might start forming opinions of their own about what should
be done with the land they live on.

The important thing is to get involved, however you can. Push, and see
who pushes back, and how. Gradually it will become much more obvious who
profits from this system, and who pays for it. The veil of lies
covering gentrifications like the Merrion Square McCondo is pretty
flimsy really, and you can see through it best if you read between the
lines of passages like this one, from Merrion Square’s website, where
they take a moment to speak candidly to potential investors:

The urban rebirth [of Tempe] can most logically be tied to the
investment potential of the area. With the recent announcements of new
construction throughout Downtown Tempe and Phoenix, like the new Hayden
Ferry Lakeside mega office, retail and hotel development, the new
Performing Arts Center on the Lake, new hotels and the Papago Park
Business Center, it’s clear that if general property values go up,
lofts, condominiums and housing values should go up as well, despite
what is happening in today’s stock market. Whether it is the purchase of
a new loft or office condominium, buyers can feel secure in their
investment choice.

Hotels, mega offices, and business centers, oh my! Somebody’s about to
make a lot of money evicting a lot of poor people out of Tempe. Nowhere
in their sales pitch will you find a single mention of anything that
would make life liveable for people who don’t have lots of extra money.
When “property values” go up, small businesses get replaced by corporate
chains. When “housing values” (our rents) go up, we get kicked out of
our homes. This makes way for the yuppie “rebirth” of what was once our
neighborhood, but is now just another vacuum of yuppie condos and
generic sprawl, another concentration of privilege and excess where you
aren’t allowed to live. It’s a process that’s already happened time
after time in this city, and in other cities across the continent. And
it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down today.

Don’t forget, property is theft – and this kind of crime pays well, if
you’re on the right side of the class war. And what about the rest of
us? No one’s going to invest money in a community garden, or
neighborhood solidarity, or affordable housing for the homeless and
unemployed, or any other facet of human life that can’t be manipulated
and exploited for the sake of a few extra thousand bucks.

Remember all this the next time you pass by the big sign on Beck &
University, the one hailing the arrival of Merrion Square Lofts. They’ll
try and tell you that they’re doing you a favor by building another
pricey, pretentious condo; that their war on the poor is an improvement
rather than an affront. They’re lying to you. Remember that none of
these people are a part of your community.

Remember that every last one of these profit-addicted investors and
developers are coming to town for one reason: to make a fortune off of
your poverty. Every last one of them. Everyone who drafted the business
plan for this abberation; every well-intentioned architect; every
weak-minded and naive city planner; every opportunistic investor and
franchise-holder; every real-estate agent and property manager who
stepped on our heads just to grab a little profit. We’ve got nothing in
common with these people, and they’ve got no desire to cut us an even
break. This is war, whether you realize you’re fighting in it or not.

To the “folk with money,” the people who now live on Beck Avenue – and
in poor neighborhoods everywhere – are just obstacles to their crusade
for endless profit and sprawl.
So when do we start fighting back?

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

You have fewer civil rights enlisted in the military than you do in
prison. As a detainee, you have the right to test the legality of your
detention as many times as you want – but once you’ve enlisted, you have
no legal right to contest your situation. One-third of homeless men are
veterans. Many veterans are ill with Gulf War Syndrome.

Myths
told by military recruiters lead teens to exchange their lives and civil
liberties for promises of college funds, travel and adventure. Here
lies the military’s Achilles heel – if they were given enough
information about the truth of enlistment, most people would never join
the military.

The Arizona Counter-Recruitment Coalition
The Arizona Counter-Recruitment Coalition (AZCRC) is a group of
students, teachers, parents, veterans, and workers from the Phoenix
metro area who provide information and perspectives to counterbalance
the one-sidedness of military recruiters. We advocate for a society that is
truly secure, through the principles of cooperation, conflict
resolution, and sustainability. We organize to replace the current order
of exploitation, conquest, and domination. We recognize the need to
work with other like-minded organizations, while exploring ways to
connect with those who may initially be opposed to our motives.

Problems
In the struggle for control over a young person’s life, the military has
the upper hand. Military recruiters have access to a student's personal
information from their school, and they use this information to target
the poor, minorities, the young and naïve.

They lie and mislead to meet enlistment quotas. Further, they’re about
to be delivered the ultimate advantage: conscription, i.e. a draft,
which will mandate involuntary servitude and provide the military with a
demographic database on an entire generation. After enlisting, or being
drafted, personal autonomy is lost. Instead, it becomes mandatory to
kill and be killed if ordered to do so, and to serve the interests of
corporate elites who value money and power over humanity and life
itself.
Enlistees who are not killed are likely to be maimed and sustain
lasting damage to their physical and mental health. Veterans of war in
Iraq have a special name for their diseases: Gulf War Syndrome. This may
be caused by forced inoculations, and/or exposure to depleted uranium,
which has devastating effects on soldiers, the environment, and the
innocent civilians who live in these war zones.

The lives of military personnel and the human rights of those who live
within US military targets are sacrificed to keep the world in a
stranglehold of US economic hegemony. Upon returning, soldiers often
bring home the violent culture of war, beating and sometimes killing
their spouses and kids, and suffering the anguish of Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome.

Solutions
Students, parents, and teachers must reclaim control of their schools
from the military and work to inform people about the dangers of
militarism. We want to empower parents who wish to invoke their legal
right to withhold their child’s contact information from the military.
We are reaching out to students with flyers and presentations, informing
them of their rights, and helping students create counter-recruitment
clubs on-campus.

We are continuously seeking teachers and administrators who see a need
to provide a broader and unbiased examination of the military, past and
present, in the world and in their schools. We believe that the
students’ best interests are served when educators teach them to use
critical thinking when presented with the slick marketing campaign that
recruiters use to attract possible recruits.
Lastly, we demand that school administrations provide us with equal
time and space to present our point of view at assemblies and job fairs,
and to place our alternative literature in career counseling centers.

Alternatives
Security: We believe our society will never be truly secure so long as
we enjoy a much higher level of consumption than the rest of the world,
based on military conquest and exploitation of the poor and the
environment. Only when all people are recognized as free and equal, with
access to affordable education and adequate resources to meet their
basic needs, in ways that preserve a heritage of natural resources for
future generations, can we live in peace and safety.

Economics: Military recruiters often target economically disadvantaged
young people with promises of college money, job training, and a ticket
out of their financial dead end. Not only are these promises in most
cases misleading, we have found that when given enough information, most
young people don’t feel that the gamble of risking their lives and
long-term physical/mental health is worth the possible benefits.
However, we must acknowledge the lack of local sustainable
community-based economic opportunities that can make “three hots and a
cot” in a battle zone seem tempting.
If we want to build an effective movement to oppose the militarization
of society, we need to seek out, support, and even create more job
opportunities that are truly productive, locally owned and locally
controlled, so that the money generated stays in our community. We also
need to help young people get access to alternative sources of college
money and job training if we wish to successfully challenge the “poverty
draft.”

Goals:
-Decentralized networking of counter-recruitment groups, including
on-campus student groups who are working to stop military recruitment
-Building draft resistance through education and networking
-A network of support for veterans – one that acknowledges their situation and illnesses due to service
-The repeal of school policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act and
ASVAB testing, as well as the replacement of JROTC programs with
electives.

Tactics:
-Distributing counter-recruitment literature to those who are targeted by military recruiters
-Speaking at and organizing community events where people can meet
other like-minded individuals interested in military and draft
resistance
-Speaking and tabling at events where our perspectives would otherwise be unheard.
-Demonstrating in the streets to show our frustration and opposition
and to bring pressure on those who support war and recruitment.